Lebanon's civil aviation leader Announced Following hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies exploding across the country this week, the British government announced on Thursday that passengers will now be banned from carrying pagers and walkie-talkies on planes in either their carry-on or checked baggage.
The explosion appears to have been a targeted attack on members of the jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah, whose leaders feared infiltration by the Israeli government. shift In the wake of the war with Israel following the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, Lebanon has shifted its communications away from modern technology and adapted to the use of pagers over the past year. On Tuesday, reports emerged that pagers began exploding simultaneously in several major Lebanese cities and in some parts of Syria, where Hezbollah operates as an ally of Iran's rogue regime. Another series of explosions occurred on Wednesday, reportedly linked to technology such as walkie-talkies and solar panels.
The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed the Israeli government for the attack, but have not presented any evidence directly linking Israel to it. The Israeli government has not admitted responsibility for the explosion or taken any concrete action, but it suggested all-out war with Hezbollah was imminent shortly after the blast. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) on Thursday interrupted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's first speech since the explosion in Beirut.
Beirut's airport said Airlines announced on Friday they would ban walkie-talkies and pagers from being carried on planes, citing concerns about the proliferation of potentially explosive devices on board. Reuters reported that the ban has been extended to include air cargo shipments as well as passenger flights. The ban is set to remain in place indefinitely.
Qatar Airways made a similar announcement on Thursday, banning the devices on flights from Beirut.
“Following instructions from the General Authority of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Lebanon, all passengers departing from Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport (BEY) will be prohibited from carrying pagers or walkie-talkies on board the aircraft,” Qatar Airways said in a statement. “This ban applies to both checked and carry-on baggage and cargo and will remain in place until further notice.”
The explosion sent waves of fear through Lebanon, where numerous explosions occurred in public places on Tuesday and Wednesday. Murder An estimated 12 people were killed and thousands injured. Many of the injured were Hezbollah jihadists, but the victims were also civilians, including children. Tuesday's explosion panic Lebanon's health system was overwhelmed as hospitals were overwhelmed with patients and blood supplies were strained.
“There was blood everywhere, people had lost eyes, holes in their backs, bloody hands,” he said. Identified She told a UAE newspaper that she was the mother of a dead Hezbollah terrorist. National While waiting for treatment for a relative at a hospital in Lebanon.
The second wave of explosions occurred in walkie-talkies as well as laptops and mobile phones, devices considered more modern than pagers. Al Jazeera Reported Twenty people were killed and more than 450 were injured on Wednesday, spreading panic among Lebanese who tried to move away from the explosive device to avoid the blast. A wedding planner who spoke to Qatari media said her team usually uses walkie-talkies to communicate during weddings but will no longer do so because “we don't really know what's going on.”
At the time of writing, it was unclear how the device was adapted into a mobile bomb. Reuters cited anonymous sources as saying: Reported It was announced on Friday that the walkie-talkies were “laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN,” which may have been packed into the battery compartment of the devices.
“Lebanese security sources had previously told Reuters that the pagers were embedded with hard-to-detect explosives,” the media outlet reported. “Another security source told Reuters that up to 3 grams (0.11 ounces) of explosives had been hidden in a new type of pager several months before the blast.”
According to reports, all of the pagers involved in the attack are branded by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company that is one of the few companies still manufacturing pagers in the 21st century. However, the company claims that it does not manufacture pagers in-house and that the pagers involved in the attack were outsourced to a mysterious supplier based in Hungary. Gold Apollo reportedly plans to sue the company. Similarly, Icom, the Japanese company that manufactured the model of walkie-talkie allegedly involved in Wednesday's explosion, told media that it hasn't manufactured the specific model used in the attack for at least 10 years.
“The IC-V82 is a portable radio that was produced and exported to overseas markets, including the Middle East, from 2004 to October 2014. Production was discontinued about 10 years ago, and we have not shipped any products since then,” Icom explained. said In a statement, the company said, “The batteries necessary to operate the device have also been discontinued, and the device does not have a holographic sticker to identify counterfeit products, so we are unable to confirm whether the product was shipped by our company.”
According to some reports, the walkie-talkies originated in China, where e-commerce companies are flagrantly violating copyright and producing counterfeit products.
Israel and Hezbollah have been at a virtual war since the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, killing an estimated 1,200 civilians in addition to committing torture, gang rape and other atrocities. Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel have forced 60,500 people to flee, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has vowed to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
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On Wednesday, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Helgi Halevi said the country was “determined to create the security conditions for the population to return.” [of northern Israel] “We will deliver shelter to their homes and communities with a high level of safety. We are prepared to do whatever it takes to make this happen.”
“There are a lot of features that have yet to be activated,” Halevi noted.
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